For a few weeks I had been heading out with the camera, walking my usual routes, getting set up, looking around, and feeling completely uninspired by everything I was seeing. More than once I came home in under an hour having not taken a single frame. The block had moved past “off day” into something real. I needed to address it.
This article is about what I think the problem actually was, the change in approach I have started trying out, and the first shoot where I tested the new thinking, which was at Llanthony Priory in the Black Mountains of Wales. The block is not fully cleared. Creative blocks rarely vanish in a single moment of insight. But the thinking has helped, and the active approach is producing better shoots, and the principle behind it is something I want to share because if I have been stuck on this then others probably have too.
If you are also blocked, this may not be your answer. Your block may have entirely different causes. But the active versus passive distinction is at least worth trying on, in case it is part of what is going on for you too.
What was happening
Specifically: I had got into a pattern of picking up a camera, walking out the front door, going on a normal walk, and waiting for inspiration to arrive.
I would walk through the woods near home. I would walk along the river. I would walk to the village. I would carry the camera and I would look around and I would wait for something to feel photographically worth a frame.
Nothing did. For weeks.
What I noticed, when I thought about this honestly, was that I had become passive. I was waiting for the world to present me with photographs, the way it had felt like the world presented me with photographs in better seasons. I was hoping inspiration would notice me and come find me. Sitting in the room with my head in my hands, hoping creativity would knock on the door.
It does not work like that.
The active vs passive distinction
The shift in thinking I want to articulate is this.
Passive photography: heading into the world with a camera and hoping the world will give you something to photograph. The walk happens. The opportunities arise or do not arise. You are open to inspiration but you are not pursuing it.
Active photography: heading into the world with a plan, a destination, a set of lenses chosen for what you intend to make, and a clear intention about what kind of images you are going to come back with. You go looking for the photograph. You do not wait for it.
When I am working well, my photography is active. When I am blocked, my photography has slid into passive without me noticing.
The shift back to active is the answer, at least for me. It does not guarantee great photographs (creativity does not work like that either), but it does guarantee that you turn up to the photographs with the right mindset, the right tools, and a deliberate intention. The hit rate goes up. The boredom goes away. The sense of being a passive observer rather than a creative agent dissolves.
This is not new advice. Plenty of photographers have written about the importance of pre-visualisation, planning, and intentional shooting. But it is advice I had stopped following without realising, and going back to it has helped me. If it sounds obvious as you read it, you are probably already doing it. I had stopped, and the gradual slide into passive shooting is what caused the block.
Choosing Llanthony Priory as the test
So if I was going to test the active approach properly, I needed to choose a location where I had high confidence I would find photographs, then plan the shoot deliberately around what I expected to find.
Llanthony Priory ticked every box. The site is a Grade I Listed building, “an important medieval monastic ruin with high quality surviving detail”, sitting in the Vale of Ewyas in the Black Mountains. It is one of the great medieval ruins in Wales, dating back to around 1120 when the Augustinian priory was established, and the priory church was “one of the greatest buildings of medieval Wales” before its long decline and eventual ruin after Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries.
In photography terms:
The location has guaranteed strong subjects. A massive medieval ruin against a backdrop of mountains. There is no way to point a camera at this place and not have something interesting in the frame.
Autumn timing is ideal. Mid-November, with the trees turning, the colours moody and gold, the light low and angled.
Variety of focal length opportunities. Close detail work on the stonework. Mid-range compositions of the ruin with foreground elements. Wide landscape shots of the priory in its valley. Long compressed shots from up the hill back down toward the ruin.
The location forces me to commit. It is a two-hour drive from where I live in South Gloucestershire. You do not drive two hours to photograph nothing. The investment of getting there is itself a forcing function for engagement.
This is the kind of location-choice thinking I had not been doing. I had been walking out the door to take photographs of “wherever I happen to be,” which is a recipe for passive shooting. Driving two hours to photograph Llanthony Priory specifically is active by definition. You are pursuing the photograph, not waiting for it.
![PLACEHOLDER: a wide establishing shot of Llanthony Priory with the Black Mountains behind, showing the kind of location that guarantees strong subjects regardless of mood]
What I brought, and why
The other active-photography principle I tested: bring more than one lens.
I have a habit of going out with my Bronica S2A and a single lens, usually the standard 75mm Nikkor. This is convenient, but it is also passive. You are limiting yourself to the photographs that 75mm can make. If a longer or wider perspective would have been better, you have already chosen not to have one available.
For Llanthony I brought the full lens kit:
- 50mm Nikkor wide, for landscape and architectural context
- 75mm Nikkor standard, the workhorse lens
- 150mm Nikkor f/3.5, for compressed perspectives and detail
- A 2x doubler (which I had not actually used before, but brought along on the principle of having options)
And a small set of filters, including a red filter for black and white work to deepen skies and bring out the contrast of the stonework against the autumn sky.
The shift from “one lens” to “several lenses with intention” is itself an active-vs-passive distinction. You are committing to making choices in the field, not defaulting to whatever happened to be on the camera.
A complication
A small awkwardness on arrival. The owner of the land that the priory sits on does not allow filming within the priory grounds itself. Still photography is fine. Video work is not.
So my approach during the actual time inside the priory was: stop filming, just shoot. I went in, made photographs without rolling the video camera, and reconvened on the outside afterwards to talk to the audience again. A small constraint, easily worked around, but worth noting if anyone wants to do their own Llanthony shoot and is planning a video project.
(The site is in the guardianship of Cadw, open all year, free to visit, with parking onsite. The land outside the immediate priory perimeter is privately farmed, hence the filming restriction.)
The lens revelation
Here is the bit of the shoot that taught me something I should have known years ago.
I started with the 50mm wide-angle inside the priory for the architectural detail and landscape context shots. Enjoyed it. The wider perspective brought the stonework and the sky into one composition, gave me layered framing, made me think about scale and depth.
Switched to the 75mm standard outside, for some mid-range work with the autumn colours. Suddenly bored.
Switched to the 150mm telephoto with the doubler for the climb up the hill behind the priory. Enjoyed it again. The compressed perspective made me look for layers and rhythms in the landscape, made me wait for people walking up the path to enter the frame at the right place, made me concentrate.
The pattern was unmistakable. Standard lenses bore me. Wide and long lenses inspire me.
This is a thing I had vaguely known about myself for a while but never quite articulated. Looking back at my photography over the past several years, the frames I am most pleased with were nearly all made on either very wide or very long lenses. The standard-focal-length frames are competent but rarely memorable.
Why does this matter? Because of my channel.
A lot of what I do on this YouTube channel is camera reviews. New camera arrives, lens is whatever lens the camera came with, I shoot a roll, I report on what the camera does. The lens that came with the camera is almost always a standard lens (50mm on 35mm, 75-80mm on 6x6, 80mm on 645, 150mm on 4x5). The standard lens is the kit lens. The kit lens is what cameras come with.
Which means I have been shooting on lenses that bore me for years, in the context of testing cameras for this channel, without recognising what that was doing to me.
The block was partly the cumulative dispiriting effect of shooting endless standard lenses on cameras I was reviewing. Even when I went out for my own photography, my muscle memory for “one camera one standard lens” had been reinforced by the channel’s needs. I had trained myself out of the focal lengths that excite me.
This realisation was worth the whole drive to Wales.
![PLACEHOLDER: the long-lens compressed shot of someone walking up the path with the priory in the background, taken on the 150mm Nikkor with the doubler, showing the kind of compressed perspective that suits this kind of work]
What came back
I shot two rolls at Llanthony.
Roll one, Ilford FP4 Plus. Some inside-the-priory architectural work on the 50mm. Some outside work with the red filter on the 75mm. The standout frame is a black-and-white outside-the-priory composition shot through some bracken in the foreground, with the priory wall behind, that I am genuinely pleased with. The red filter darkened the sky and brought out the stonework texture. The kind of frame the active approach was supposed to produce.
Roll two, Kodak Gold 200, for the autumn colours. Some longer-lens work going up the hill. People-on-the-path compositions, with the doubler giving me a 300mm-equivalent reach. A few of these are excellent, particularly one where the light caught a walker just at the right moment with the priory ruin behind.
The hit rate was higher than my recent passive shoots had been, and crucially, I came home wanting to go out again, which I had not felt in weeks. The active approach was working as a creative restart, regardless of how individual frames came out.
What I learned
In order of importance.
1. The block was real but its cause was diagnosable. Passive shooting habits had crept in. Identifying that was 70% of solving it. Sometimes you do not need new techniques; you need to notice what you have stopped doing.
2. I do not like standard lenses. This will inform how I approach every shoot from here on. Where possible, I will bring wide and long lenses and skip the standard altogether. For camera reviews where I am stuck with the kit lens, I will be more conscious that the lens is constraining me, and I will compensate by being more inventive in other dimensions (composition, lighting, subject choice).
3. Active photography requires planning, not just willingness. Choosing a location with high subject density (a medieval ruin, a working florist, a botanical garden) before you leave the house, then planning what lenses and what kinds of photographs you intend to make, is the foundation. You cannot be reactive about this and expect it to work.
4. The block is not fully cleared. I want to be honest about this. One good shoot does not mean creativity is back on tap. I will have more days of feeling blocked. The thinking helps but is not a permanent fix.
5. Driving two hours to photograph something is sometimes the right answer. The investment of getting somewhere is itself part of the active approach. It commits you. Local shooting can become too easy and too passive.
What’s coming up
The active approach is informing my next shoots.
Next on the channel: my local businesses shoot with Jolies Fleurs in Thornbury, an active shoot with a chosen location, planned cameras, planned lighting (which did not quite work, as you can read in that article), and real intention. The contrast with the Llanthony shoot is useful: same active mindset, different result, both more engaged than the passive shooting I had been doing before.
Beyond that: I am planning a medium format buying guide article where I lay out my entire camera collection at its current peak before I start selling some of it off. Active in a different sense: doing the inventory consciously rather than letting the collection drift.
On lens choice: I will be making more conscious lens choices on every shoot. For the camera review work, I am going to be more honest with viewers about how the kit lens is shaping the results. Wider or longer alternatives will get more airtime where I have them.
A thought to leave you with
If you are feeling photographically blocked: try the active vs passive distinction on for size.
Ask yourself: am I waiting for photographs to come to me, or am I going to find them?
If the answer is “waiting,” pick a location with guaranteed strong subjects, plan it deliberately, choose specific lenses for what you intend to make, and go. The first active shoot might not produce extraordinary photographs, but it will reconnect you with the act of pursuing photography rather than receiving it. That reconnection is what clears blocks.
And do not wait for the block to clear before going. Going is part of clearing the block.
Drop me a comment if you are feeling blocked, or if you have your own techniques for clearing creative ruts. I would love to hear what works for other people. I will be doing more thinking about this in future articles, particularly when I revisit my landscape photography mental block, which is a related but distinct problem and which I worked on more directly the following year.
The block is not gone. The thinking is helping. Llanthony Priory was the start.